Luigi Mangione Makes It Back into Jon Stewart's Monologue
There have been 384 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2025. On Sunday, there was a violent attack on a Michigan Mormon church, which resulted in four people killed and numerous others injured. Within hours, the shooter was identified as a hard-core Trump supporter, which upended early right-wing speculation that it was a radical leftist “attacking Christianity.” When his identity was revealed, there was a nonstop barrage of information about the shooter.
Jon Stewart addressed the news of the shooter and the immediate attempts for the right to blame it on someone from the opposite side of the political spectrum in his Monday night monologue. The host decried the wall-to-wall coverage of the shooter’s identity.
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“Now, call me old fashioned, but I miss the good old days of mass shootings, when networks took a principled stance to not shower attention on acts designed to get attention,” Stewart said.
He then ran through a montage of major news outlets refusing to name and identify various mass shooters over the years. This included Fox News and CNN. At the time, the hosts of those programs said they wouldn’t give the shooter’s name because they didn’t want other potential people to perpetrate copycat acts for similar chances of notoriety.
Now, in an era of hyper-divisive punditry, the shooter’s name, photo and political affiliation are always reported (at length) to corroborate or dispel the rumors of the person’s motivations. Stewart adopted an old-man voice to reflect on an era not so rife with the partisan mass shooter blame game.
“That’s right, boys and girls, you know,” Stewart said, “when I was a boy, there was a brief period in American media where not only wouldn’t they say the suspected killer’s name, they wouldn’t constantly show the suspected killer’s OnlyFans hot shots. They wouldn’t do it.”
As he was speaking, Luigi Mangione’s photo appeared on screen. It’s the one where the alleged CEO killer is shirtless and hiking, and looking absolutely ripped. Stewart jumped when the image appeared. “Oh, dear Lord. Oh. Oh my god,” Stewart said. “He could have done so much good with those (looks). And yet, he chose the dark side.”
Stewart then pivoted back to the larger, worse conversation at play. “So why has the news media become obsessed with right, left framing of violence? Well, part of the reason is, they are following the lead of social media,” Stewart continued. “Social media is doing it crazier and faster than anybody else.”
Not that it makes it any more acceptable, of course.
